It's hard to decide what's most shocking about the results of the audit of the State Bureau of Investigation released Wednesday. 

Maybe it's that the two former FBI agents who conducted the inquiry found 230 criminal cases from 1987- 2003 in which SBI agents filed reports about blood evidence that were at least incomplete.

Or that the investigators recommended an in-depth look at 190 of the cases saying that "information that may have been material and even favorable to the defense of an accused defendant was withheld or misrepresented." Maybe it's that the report said the lab may have broken state and federal laws that require the state to turn over important evidence to the defense.

Or that it all means that more innocent people have been convicted of crimes and sent to prison because of the deceitful behavior of several SBI agents.

All that is bad enough. Then consider that it was going on for 16 years under the noses of SBI directors and two Attorneys General and may still have never have been investigated if not for the devastating series recently published by the Raleigh News & Observer.

The paper's story about the audit results said the N.C. justice system shook Wednesday. The people of the state were surely rattled too, trying to understand how the system designed to guarantee justice seems to have so often undermined it.

Then there's this. Three of the cases where blood test results were withheld by the SBI lab were death penalty cases in which the inmates were then executed.

Consider that for a moment. Three men were put to death by the State of North Carolina after being denied a fair trial.

That doesn't necessarily mean the defendants were innocent. It means that they were denied their constitutional rights. And there's no way to fix it, no way to have another trial or hearing, no way to correct the injustice. 

Death penalty supporters always brush off suggestions that the trials and sentencing hearings of many people sentenced to death in North Carolina were unfair. They cite the length of time of the appeals process or the number of courts that review capital cases before inmate is executed.

That process doesn't mean much when law enforcement agents are hiding or misrepresenting evidence that no one ever sees.

The cases of four inmates currently on death row were cited in the audit as ones where blood evidence was withheld. Who knows how many more trials were distorted by false testimony of lab experts working closely with prosecutors to garner a conviction regardless of the evidence the lab discovered.

As the News & Observer pointed out Thursday, the blood analysis unit is just one of six sections of the lab. The paper's series uncovered serious questions about the ballistics unit too, though no review of that or any other section is in the works.

There is a long list of reforms that must come out of this indictment of North Carolina's system of justice and one of them is the end of the death penalty in North Carolina.

No one can now dispute that the state has executed people without giving them a fair trial, at least three that we know of. 

People currently on death row should have their sentences commuted to life in prison without parole. And it should no longer be an option for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

The system is too broken. Even if it's "fixed" we can never be sure that human error or intentional deceit by a rogue agent or lab expert won't subvert justice again.

It's a gamble we can no longer afford to take. Uncertainly and capital punishment cannot be allowed to coexist. The mistakes cannot be corrected.